About the Author

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Nelly Ahmadi is a Persian-Canadian novelist and short-story writer who grew up in southern Iran and now lives in Canada. She spent most of her life in Hormozgan, along the shores of the Persian Gulf—a region whose people, landscapes, traditions, folklore, and history have profoundly shaped both her imagination and her writing.

The world of her fiction is not simply a place imagined from afar. It grows out of a world she knew firsthand: the coastal towns and islands of southern Iran, the sea, old neighborhoods, family stories, local customs, and the lives of the people around her. Many of the details that give her novels their distinctive sense of place are rooted in memories, observations, and stories gathered over years of living in the region.

Her major work, The Drowned Island trilogy, draws deeply from this cultural and historical landscape. Spanning three generations, the trilogy blends historical fiction, romance, and family saga, bringing to life the traditions and everyday world of southern Iran while exploring how lives, relationships, and communities are transformed across generations.

Her short fiction takes a different path, often moving into mystery, surrealism, and the unexpected. Yet across her work, one thread remains constant: an interest in people, the places that shape them, and the stories and memories that survive as the world around them changes.